The tender negotiations procedure related to the selection of the general contractor to build Lakhta Center is completed. The bidders are ranked. The main potential general contractor is defined according to the lowest offered price, Renaissance Construction company.

Prior to general contract award the current works are procured in separate work packages and carried out slightly ahead of the time schedule approved. The main work packages are carried out by Bauer, Arabtec, Geoizol companies. The contracts related to the foundations of the multifunctional building and the tower to be awarded to Renaissance Construction are in the process of approval and finalization.

Reference Note: The installation of the pile foundation under the tower (piles up to 82m deep) is completed including the installation of a designated structure, the diaphragm wall which will protect the foundation from the underground water. The zero cycle general contractor is Arabtec Construction, the subcontractors are Bauer (piles), Geostroy (d-wall). In addition the works are completed related to the installation of the disk system which supports the d-wall from collapsing because of soil pressure as the pit is excavated (Arabtec, Geostroy).
In parallel the pile foundation under the multifunctional building is prepared which size- and complexity-wise is comparable to the tower (Bauer). The works related to the pile foundation of the stylobat (the car park) and the entrance arch (Geoizol, Bauer) are underway.
In total about 2 000 piles of various diameter and depth will be installed at site. As of today over 1 400 piles are completed.

The cost of the works related to the foundation completed up to date is 145 million euro.
The total area is
400,000 sq.m.
The Tower is 180,000 sq.m.
The Multifunctional Building and Stylobat is 220,000 sq.m.

Europe on the Up, Up, Up – The Tallest Skyscrapers Currently Under Construction

Nowhere in Europe are taller buildings going up than in Russia. St. Petersburg is currently witnessing the construction of the continent’s future tallest skyscraper, Lakhta Center. At a height of 463 meters, the tapering, pointed supertall will surpass the current record-holder, Moscow’s Mercury City, by no fewer than 124 meters. Emporis (www.emporis.com), the international provider of building data, has compiled a list of the ten tallest skyscrapers currently under construction in Europe. In addition to Lakhta Center, the list contains a further six projects from Russia, all of whose construction sites are located in Moscow.

Some way behind the Lakhta Center, with a future height of 361 meters, lies Vostok (Federation Tower East), the second-placed skyscraper in the ranking, closely followed by the OKO Apartment Tower, which will reach 352 meters into the skies. Both of these major projects are being built in Moscow, as are a further four entries in the list. Two of them are not far off completion – Eurasia Tower, which is set to come in at just over 300 meters and will offer exclusive apartments on its highest floors, and Evolution Tower, 255 meters tall and particularly conspicuous for its shape, which twists upward in a spiral.

Due to these numerous major projects, Moscow is set to continue as Europe’s skyscraper capital into the future. Already today, five of the continent’s ten tallest completed skyscrapers are located in the city, including the current European front-runner Mercury City with its record height of 339 meters. In as little as two years, following the projected completion of Vostok (Federation Tower East), Moscow will dominate the top ten of the tallest skyscrapers in Europe, with no fewer than seven buildings.

Alongside Moscow, the Turkish metropolis of Istanbul is increasingly establishing itself as a center of skyscraper construction. The only city in the top ten not in Russia, Istanbul has no fewer than three buildings in the list. In addition to the two 284-meter-tall Skyland Towers, the city also has The Metropol Tower, at 250 meters the tenth-placed building, in the starting blocks. The three towers are due to grace the skyline of the city on the Bosphorus from 2016 onward.

However, even if the Lakhta Center is set to approach the 500-meter mark, European skyscraper construction still has some distance to go to catch up with its Asian paradigms in terms of height. By way of comparison, the world’s tallest building, the 828-meter Burj Khalifa in Dubai, is as tall as Lakhta Center and Vostok (Federation Tower East) combined – and the tallest building currently under construction anywhere in the world, Kingdom Tower in Jeddah, will, with its projected height of a kilometer, be more than twice as tall as the future European record-holder.